February

From February 1-28, Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted more than 2,200 references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.

DEMO 2011: Charter a private jet with FlyRuby | The New York Times

February 28
The service was originally developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of a project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that was supposed to help the air force manage its private jets. The service crawls those databases to find empty seats on privately-chartered flights across the country and connects its users with those pilots and charter companies. More than 40 percent of privately-chartered flights end up with empty seats, according to the company. There are other private-flight booking companies, like Blue Star Jets. But none of them have achieved the same visibility that some of the more popular flight search startups - such as Hipmunk or Sidestep - have achieved. That's probably because the whole process typically involves a quote and some kind of conversation rather than a direct transaction. Blue Star Jets, for example, only offers its users a quote as to how much the flight will cost - they can't directly book through the site.http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2011/02/28/28venturebeat-demo-2011-charter-a-private-jet-with-flyruby-32657.html?ref=internet

February 28
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will reduce CO2 and nitrogen oxide emissions levels - but they are also expected to push up sulphur oxide emissions. According to the team at Carnegie Mellon University the net emissions from the use of plug-in vehicles depends primarily on the efficiency of the entire vehicle fleet, charging strategy, battery pack capacity and driving patterns. They modeled the net emissions in two regional transmission operators under different scenarios for future power generation.http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20110228/study-reveals-plug-in-hybrids-to-drive-down-co2-emissions.htm

February 28Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski work in this socially engaging genre, a hybridization and outgrowth of conceptual, performance, and public art with firm roots dating back to Dadaism. Artworks of contextual practice alter public space and context, and viewers often become unwitting participants. "I'm interested in how you can engage someone in a work [of art], when they don't even know it's a work," says the easygoing Rubin, who sports glasses and a well-kept goatee. Rubin is an associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and has been creating art specifically geared toward engaging the general public for 16 years. In addition to Conflict Kitchen, his projects include The Waffle Shop, an adjacent space that serves waffles and creates an impromptu talk show; Solitary City Walks, where for a 24-hour period participants walk around Denver with a police escort; and a project in development involving homing pigeons.http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2011/0228/Promoting-cross-cultural-understanding-through-food-and-art

Books in consideration: 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place' | Los Angeles Times Blogs

February 26
Reviewer Chuck Thompson wrote, "In recounting the tale that led to his dramatic field surgery, Aaron Ralston proves a gifted writer. ... Those who wondered how anyone could perform such a task will be satisfied by graphic explanations of exactly how he broke, sawed and snipped through bone and muscle." Ralston, who will be the commencement speaker at Carnegie Mellon, his alma mater, in May, may well attend the Oscars. Interestingly, back in 2003, one park ranger who spoke to The Times seemed to foreshadow the goings-on Sunday. Describing Ralston's actions, Glenn Sherrill said, "That's true grit."http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/02/books-oscars-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place.html

Books in consideration: 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place' | Los Angeles Times

February 26
Reviewer Chuck Thompson wrote, "In recounting the tale that led to his dramatic field surgery, Ralston proves a gifted writer. ... Those who wondered how anyone could perform such a task will be satisfied by graphic explanations of exactly how he broke, sawed and snipped through bone and muscle." Ralston, who will be the commencement speaker at Carnegie Mellon, his alma mater, in May, may well attend the Oscars. Interestingly, back in 2003, one park ranger who spoke to The Times seemed to foreshadow the goings-on Sunday. Describing Ralston's actions, Glenn Sherrill said, "That's true grit."http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/02/books-oscars-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place.html

Schooling the Jeopardy! Champ: Far from elementary | Science

February 25
For 7 years, IBM researchers toiled to build a machine that could understand and answer spoken questions. In 2007, the company invited computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to two workshops at its research center in Yorktown Heights, New York. For CMU graduate student Nico Schlaefer, the workshops were a turning point. As an undergraduate at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and a visiting scholar at CMU in 2005, Schlaefer had built a question-answer system called Ephyra. Impressed, IBM offered Schlaefer a summer internship with the project-the first of three he spent working on Watson. Last week, Schlaefer, now a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at CMU and an IBM Ph.D. Fellow, told Science about the algorithm he contributed to the now-world-famous computer.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6020/999.short

Commentary: I'll take 'Dread of the Future' for $1,000, Alex | McClatchy Newspapers

February 23
"Just understanding the question is a pretty good deal," Luis Von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, told the PBS show "Nova." (Yes, I'm such a geezer-nerd that I watched "Nova" about "Jeopardy." So sue me.) Von Ahn went on to say, in vaguely Rumsfeldian terms, "There's just so much we know that we don't know we know." Thus we enter the no-longer-science-fiction realm of artificial intelligence, where computers don't just crunch facts, but they also know the things we don't know we know and actually begin to think.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/02/23/109257/ill-take-dread-of-the-future-for.html#ixzz1EswL0rL9

Ronald Reagan and the African American | The National Review

February 21
Ronald Reagan, who narrowly lost the Republican party's presidential nomination in 1976, realized that his party needed to broaden its base into a durable coalition that would help its members win and maintain office at the local, state, and national levels. Speaking before a gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 15, 1977, just five days before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office, Reagan emphasized this point, stating: The New Republican party I envision is still going to be the party of Lincoln and that means we are going to have to come to grips with what I consider to be a major failing of the party: its failure to attract the majority of black voters. It's time black America and the New Republican party move toward each other and create a situation in which no black vote can be taken for granted. Throughout the late 1970s, Reagan continued to exhort fellow Republicans to face this problem, and he worked to win the black vote after he won his party's presidential nomination in 1980. Speaking at the Urban League convention in New York on Aug. 5, 1980, he proclaimed, "I am committed to the protection and enforcement of the civil rights of black Americans. This commitment is interwoven into every phase of the programs I will propose." *This article was written by Carnegie Mellon faculty member Kiron Skinner.http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/259950/ronald-reagan-and-african-american-kiron-k-skinner

Polish chemist gets Israeli 'Nobel prize' | The News, Poland

February 18
Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski has been awarded the Wolf Prize, Israel's prestigious award for scientific and artistic achievement. Matyjaszewski works at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Centre of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Lodz, central Poland. Matyjaszewski is best known for his discovery of atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), which revolutionized the way macromolecules are produced.http://www.thenews.pl/international/artykul149602_polish-chemist-gets-israeli-nobel-prize.html

Q&A: Cyber-espionage | CBC.ca

February 17
CBC News made public on Thursday the results of an investigation that showed the cyberattack was first detected by government officials in early January and involved the Finance Department, the Treasury Board and Defence Research and Development Canada. The breaches were traced back to computer servers in China although there is no way of knowing whether those who perpetrated the attacks were actually in China or simply routing the attacks through China to cover their tracks. It's only the latest example of what experts say is a growing threat: global cyber-espionage. CBC News spoke to Pradeep Khosla, dean of the College of Engineering at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University and founding director of CyLab, the university's cyber-security research institute, about the nature of such attacks and the need for greater cybersecurity.http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2011/02/17/f-cyberattack-pradeep-khosla.html

Changing gears: Mayor Daley and Chicago's economic transformation | National Public Radio

February 17Don Carter is the director of Carnegie Mellon's Remaking Cities Institute. He said it's clear that Chicago has been a standout among Midwestern cities that have been able to transform into a global economy. He attributes much of the city's success to Daley - but added it just takes strength and staying on task: "You've got to have a vision and you've got to convey that vision to your department heads and say, this is what I have in mind and help me get to that point." A new era begins next week, when Chicagoans will face a ballot that for the first time in more than 20 years doesn't have a Daley name. In fact, there's been a Daley in the mayor's office in Chicago for more than 40 of the past 55 years.http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-02-17/changing-gears-mayor-daley-and-chicagos-economic-transformation-82463

I, reporters | The Economist Blog

February 16
Surely no self-respecting hack would argue that a moment of insight or analytical expertise that lies at the heart of solid journalism can be reduced to a series of simple, easily reproduced tasks? There is, after all, no way that the spark of inspiration ignited by the nuanced and intangible intercourse of analysis and synthesis can be clasped, not to mention crammed into the rigid corset of algorithmic rules. Or can it? Jim Giles, a writer who has contributed to this newspaper, fellow journalist MacGregor Campbell and a team of researchers led by Niki Kittur, from Carnegie Mellon University in America, decided to check.http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/02/algorithmic_news

Machines beat us at our own game: What can we do? | Associated Press/ABC News

February 16
Watson's victory leads to the question: What can we measly humans do that amazing machines cannot do or will never do? The answer, like all of "Jeopardy!," comes in the form of a question: Who - not what - dreamed up Watson? While computers can calculate and construct, they cannot decide to create. So far, only humans can. "The way to think about this is: Can Watson decide to create Watson?" said Pradeep Khosla, dean of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "We are far from there. Our ability to create is what allows us to discover and create new knowledge and technology."http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=12935833

Carbon footprint comparisons from your smartphone | The Guardian

February 15
Measuring the carbon footprint of any product is a tricky process. Back in December researchers at Carnegie Mellon's Green Design Institute in the US released a paper on assessing the carbon footprint of an IBM rack-mounted server. The paper set out to demonstrate that measuring a carbon footprint is not as precise as might be thought (and often assumed in policy making and labelling). In the case of the IBM computer, the research found that there was least uncertainty in production, since relatively few components were involved. However, the report pointed out that delivery via air transport was an important factor and varied considerably between different final assembly sites and delivery locations.http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/carbon-footprint-comparisons-smartphone

Ask for a raise? Most women hesitate | NPR's "All Things Considered"

February 14
In the face of a persistent gender pay gap, researchers and women's advocates are focusing on one little-discussed part of the problem: Women simply don't ask for more money. There are many reasons why, despite widespread gains in the workplace, women still earn on average about 78 cents to a man's dollar. But the failure to negotiate higher pay is crucial. Research shows men are four times more likely than women to ask for a salary raise, and economist Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon University says this has a snowball effect. Even a small pay boost will mean bigger annual raises and possibly bigger bonuses and it will carry over to a new employer, who is almost certain to ask: What was your last salary?http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133599768/ask-for-a-raise-most-women-hesitate

You have a regional dialect — even on Twitter | BBC News

February 12
Many have referred to the internet being very much a "global village". But even though we are now supposedly part of one huge web community with a shared lexicon, we still maintain characteristics specific to our locality — even when we communicate in just 140 characters. That is according to a new study by Dr Jacob Eisenstein from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He used geo-tagging to locate 9,500 users of Twitter across the US to see if, when comparing how we chat among our friends, people in the same places speak in similar ways.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12381912

Bad times may seem worse if you expect to repeat them | HealthDay News/U.S. News and World Report

February 10
People are more likely to recall an unpleasant experience as being less painful or annoying if they believe it is over than if they expect it to occur again, say researchers. Click here to find out more! On the other hand, they remember fun activities as equally enjoyable whether they think they'll do them again or not. Bracing for the worst may help people reduce their discomfort if they have a bad experience and allow them to be pleasantly surprised if nothing bad happens, according to study co-authors Jeff Galak of Carnegie Mellon University and Tom Meyvis of New York University.http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/pain/articles/2011/02/10/bad-times-may-seem-worse-if-you-expect-to-repeat-them

February 8
The majority of African nations favor a negotiated solution, Depagne said, including Libya, Congo, Gabon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cameroon and Tanzania. Jendayi Frazer, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said "The South African government would support Gbagbo because that's historically who they have supported." She added that the country may have significant economic interests at stake.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-08/ecowas-criticizes-s-africa-warship-off-west-africa.html

Health benefits of falling and staying in love | The Washington Post

February 8
If being in love makes you happy, it may also have another welcome health benefit: fewer colds. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh assessed 334 healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 54, for their emotional styles. Those who tended to experience positive emotions such as happy, pleased and relaxed were more resistant to the common cold than those who felt anxious, hostile or depressed. Since the study covered anyone with positive emotions, the results could apply to those in happy relationships - or anyone with a sunny outlook.http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/02/08/hella-koo-finding-twitter-dialect/?KEYWORDS=%22Carnegie+Mellon%22

February 8
The tests, called captchas - a term coined by Carnegie Mellon University researchers in 2000 stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" - prevent computers from making false online accounts and logging into private ones. Unlike in the past, these new captchas will serve a dual purpose, as both a security measure for the websites publishing them, and as an advertisement for the companies paying to have them published.http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2011-02-08-newwebads08_ST_N.htm

Online courses, still lacking that third dimension | The New York Times

February 5
Developing that best-in-the-world online course - in which students would learn as much, or more, than in an ordinary classroom or a hybrid online class - requires significant investment. The Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, which has developed about 15 sophisticated online courses, mostly in the sciences, spent $500,000 to $1 million to write software for each. But neither Carnegie Mellon nor other institutions, which are invited to use its online courses, dares to use them without having a human instructor, too.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/business/06digi.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=%22Carnegie%20Mellon%22&st=cse

Pittsburgh plays pension defense | The Wall Street Journal

February 5
But to address the problem, city officials say union employees will need to contribute more out of their paychecks and the retirement age will need to be raised. They would also like to offer new workers defined-contribution plans-along the lines of 401(k) accounts-but say that would mean changing a state law that currently requires defined-benefit plans for municipal employees. Eliminating spiking of firefighter pensions also would require state intervention, according to Mr. Ravenstahl. "The problem is all over the country," said Bob Strauss, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University here. But Pittsburgh, he said, "has not faced up publicly to the totality of its financial challenges."http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704376104576122371324439518.html?KEYWORDS=%22Carnegie+Mellon%22

Oscar win for Best Actress ups divorce risk | ANI/Times of India

February 2
A long line of best actress winners including Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Halle Berry and Kate Winslet experienced the end of their marriages not long after taking home their awards, say researchers at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and Carnegie Mellon University. On the other hand, Best Actor winners do not experience an increase in the risk of divorce after an Oscar. "Research has shown that, in the general population, gender differences have historically given roles with greater power and status to men and roles with lesser status and power to women. Studies have demonstrated that breaching this social norm within a marriage—for example, when a wife earns more than her husband—can strain the relationship," said Tiziana Casciaro, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Rotman School, who co-authored the study with Colleen Stuart, a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, and Sue Moon, a PhD student at the Rotman School.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/man-woman/Oscar-win-for-Best-Actress-ups-divorce-risk/articleshow/7383802.cms

Packers, Steelers fans among NFL's most rabid | Associated Press/NPR

February 2
Steelers fans are in another realm, argues the co-curator of a Pittsburgh exhibit called "Whatever It Takes: Steelers Fan Collections, Rituals and Obsessions." "It's a unifying force that crosses all demographic boundaries," said Astria Suparak, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Gallery. "It crosses class, races; your bus drivers, your doctors, your anarchists, your artists are all Steelers fans and that's very unusual. There are some very clear lines in other cities for sports fans that don't get crossed — but not in Pittsburgh. "It's very ritualistic. It's passed on from generation to generation."http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133443625

Study shows hybrids and diesels retain more value over time | Reuters.com

February 2
A new Carnegie Mellon University study released last week reveals that hybrid and diesel-engine vehicles are a better value compared to vehicles with gasoline engines. The economics of hybrids and diesels are commonly evaluated based on their purchase price-on average higher than comparable gas-powered cars-compared to savings on fuel during their use. Retention of value-in terms of higher resale value-can skew the economic benefits in favor of alternative fuel-efficient cars, such as hybrids, diesels and electric vehicles.http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/idUS242883403320110202

Snake-bots slither inside your body during surgery | Wired.co.uk

February 1
Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University are creating snake-like robots that can slither into body parts that are too dangerous to open up surgically, like the heart. Howie Choset, a roboticist at CMU, has invented Cardio Arm, a 30-cm-long serpentine robot that is designed to help out during heart surgery. It has an articulated design with 102 cylindrical links housing flexible working parts through which catheter-based tools for therapy and imaging can be inserted. The robot can manoeuvre itself into the patient's chest through a 19mm incision in the abdomen. A camera fitted to the front of the robot allows the surgeon to navigate using a joystick which controls the head of the snake.http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-02/01/snake-robot-heart-surgery